For more than 40 years, a North Carolina State Bar program has provided that interest earned on lawyers’ trust funds be used to finance grants to provide needed legal services to countless North Carolinians. The program has provided essential funding for legal service entities throughout the state without the use of State funds. Recently, however,...
Chris Olson of Olson Law, PLLC was named a North Carolina Super Lawyer for 2026. Super Lawyers is a research-driven, peer-influenced rating service of lawyers who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. The selection process for Super Lawyers involves peer nominations and evaluation by attorneys credentialed in the nominee’s practice...
Josh Stein, Governor of North Carolina has proclaimed that August 27 will hereafter be recognized as Ronnie Long Freedom Day. On August 27, 2020, Ronnie Long was finally released from prison following a wrongful incarceration that spanned 44 years, 3 months, and 17 days. Following his release from prison, Mr. Long was granted a Pardon...
One would understand if Ronnie Long had turned bitter and angry. After all, he had spent 44 years, 3 months, and 17 days in prison as an innocent man, wrongly taken from his family when he was just 20 years old. But Ronnie Long is a special individual. He survived a four-decade wrongful incarceration that...
Chris Olson, a civil rights attorney with Olson Law, PLLC, was recognized by North Carolina Lawyers Weekly in its annual listing of the state’s largest verdicts and settlements. Olson claimed the #2 spot for the 2024 list with the $25 million recovery in the wrongful incarceration lawsuit which Olson filed on behalf of Mr. Ronnie...
The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission (“Commission” or “ICC”), a first in the nation entity focused on examination of credible claims of wrongful conviction, would be eliminated under the N.C. Senate’s proposed 2025-2027 budget. That move would be a mistake. The annual budget for the Innocence Inquiry Commission is fairly modest – just $1.6 million....
Chris Olson of Olson Law, PLLC received the 2025 North Carolina Lawyers Weekly “Leaders in the Law” Award in the Newsmaker category. The recognition was based upon Olson’s successful handling of Mr. Ronnie Long’s wrongful incarceration lawsuit. Ronnie Long’s convictions were vacated in August 2020, following an en banc ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court...
No longer is Georgia one of the handful of jurisdictions in the United States with no procedure to provide some measure of compensation to those who have been wrongfully convicted. The new legislation, effective July 1, 2025, is titled “Wrongful Conviction and Incarceration Compensation Act,” and is codified at O.C.G.A. §§ 17-22-1 –12. Prior to...
Chris Olson of Olson Law, PLLC was named a North Carolina Super Lawyer for 2025. Super Lawyers is a research-driven, peer-influenced rating service of outstanding lawyers who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. The selection process for Super Lawyers involves peer nominations and evaluation by attorneys credentialed in the nominee’s...
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an important ruling on transgender healthcare and the Equal Protection Clause. The case, Kadel v. Folwell, (No. 22-1721, 4th Cir. Apr. 29, 2024), involved the North Carolina and West Virginia State Health Plans. In recent years, the state administrators of both healthcare insurance plans made changes to...